Music review: Laneway Festival

Annabel Ross

Blessed as Laneway Festival usually is with a stellar lineup of indie artists, its configuration forces fans to make some tough decisions – particularly when one stage is a good 10 to 15-minute walk from the other (longer when it's busy) and when so many great acts are playing at once.

DIIV (pronounced Dive), from Brooklyn, look like a bunch of trendy teenagers but sound like something far more accomplished. Their beachy riffs are a refreshing salve on the Mistletone stage as the sun begins to wane in the late afternoon, while jazz-fusion bassist Thundercat, a key figure on Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly, strums his oversize guitar into funky submission at the Red Bull Music Academy Stage. In terms of both sound and accessibility, the Mistletone and Red Bull stages are the best. The Very West Stage and, to a lesser extent, the Dean Turner Stage are long and narrow, and far harder to reach the front.

Some of the country's best live rock bands – The Smith Street Band, Royal Headache, Violent Soho – represented strongly throughout, but it was sheeny synth-pop that ruled the end of the day, from Canadian firecracker Grimes and her frenetic girl gang, to Glaswegian dance-pop trio Chvrches, whose arsenic-laced confections reached ravey new heights, to eerie electronic duo Purity Ring, who made the most of their evening time slot with frontwoman Megan James languid in voice and body amid strings of twinkling lights and glowing lanterns.

The lineup felt slightly less exciting than previous years, with fewer acts quite as year-defining as the likes of say, Courtney Barnett, FKA Twigs and Caribou in 2015.

That said, logistical improvements made the experience far more enjoyable on the whole than last year. Add a couple of knockout acts in 2017 and you'd be hard pressed to find a better day out in Melbourne.